Academic dhimmitude: passing off propaganda as education, and making students accept highly politicized and controvertible material as fact — notably, that Islam as a religion is peaceful and tolerant, just as the dhimmis of old had to sing the praises of Islam’s peacefulness and tolerance or risk forfeiting their contract of “protection.”
Anti-dhimmitude: calling things by their right names, and refusing to be cowed from legitimate criticism of Islam and jihad by cries of “bigotry” and “academic freedom.” Alan Dershowitz here proves to be a capable anti-dhimmi. From the New York Sun, with thanks to EPG:
It’s not often that a professor tells a packed crowd at Columbia University that Edward Said was a political extremist and that faculty members in the school’s Middle East studies department encourage Islamic terrorism.
The professor who made those statements yesterday isn’t from Columbia but from Harvard. Law professor Alan Dershowitz showed up at the intellectual home of Said, a literature professor who was a fierce critic of Israel, to rebuke Columbia’s faculty and administration for tolerating an atmosphere on campus that he said promotes the hatred of Israel.
“This is the most unbalanced university that I have come across when it comes to all sides of the Middle East conflict being presented,” Mr. Dershowitz told hundreds of students and a smattering of Columbia faculty members.
“I have never seen a university with as much faculty silence,” he said.
At a campus already divided by a controversy that has flared for months – one that pits a handful of Jewish students against some professors in the Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures department – the appearance of Mr. Dershowitz was the latest indication that the most serious crisis of President Lee Bollinger’s tenure is far from over.
Mr. Dershowitz’s speech, which lasted about an hour, drew a few catcalls from some hostile members of the audience, who accused the lawyer of supporting torture. It also prompted frequent outbursts of applause from many in the audience, as he repeatedly expressed contempt for the Columbia scholars in the Middle East studies department who are the subject of an internal campus inquiry.